Thread by @hellokatepayne

🧵 I spent a couple days last week in Benton County, just west of Linn County, where people are still reeling from the #derecho.

If you thought Cedar Rapids was livid about lack of media coverage, let me tell you...I’m sorry I wasn’t there sooner.

#Iowahurricane

Driving thru Benton County, in some areas it seemed nearly every farm was significantly damaged, horizon dotted by blue tarps, shattered trees, crumpled grain bins, flattened corn. And that’s after a solid two weeks of Herculean cleanup efforts.

#derecho2020 #iowahurricane

As Steve Meyer, head off Benton County Emergency Management Commission told me, the devastation is “numbing”.

At least with a tornado you drive in & out of the damage area, he says. With the #IowaDerecho ‘it just never ends’.

#iowahurricane

Beyond damage to homes, Steve Meyer of Benton Co Em Mgmt Comm said what gets him are broken tombstones, century-old windmills & ‘landmark barns’, all ‘gone’.

Says recovery from #IowaDerecho ‘will never be complete’.

Before & after of welcome to Belle Plaine grain bin mural 👇🏻

I would be driving & just let out an involuntary groan over & over bc seeing more devastation was like a gut punch.

Ppl told me about grain bins flying half a mile thru the air, then barreling thru someone’s property.

Catholic Church in Norway 👇🏻

#IowaDerecho #iowahurricane

There’s scraps of metal scattered throughout many fields still, some more like giant sheets of metal, twisted and crumpled.

Going to be painstaking to get all that out so it doesn’t get caught up in machinery.

#IowaDerecho #iowahurricane

I met Terry & Judi Hertle. They live(d) in the house T was born in, that he’s lived in his whole life.

Was built in 1919 by his grandparents who came over on the Red Star Line from Germany.

The house now has no roof. Black mold is taking over the basement #IowaDerecho

Terry & Judi have dug a big pit out back where they’re burning their ruined belongings, some of which are still scattered in the fields.

Decades-old birthday cards, their son’s old stroller, in a pit to be burned.

They’re not the only ones.

#IowaDerecho #iowahurricane

The Hertles say they’re well-insured, this won’t bankrupt them, they’ll figure it out (they’re in their mid 70s).

Not necessarily the case for many.

At the Timber Ridge trailer park outside of Shellsburg, tents were still set up where families slept after the #IowaDerecho

Some of the trailers at Timber Ridge were entirely knocked off their foundations while people were inside. Just imagine that terror.

Many were able to relocate to hotels in Cedar Falls w help from Red Cross. But longterm....? #IowaDerecho #iowahurricane

Timber Ridge mgr told me it’s been a struggle just to get a dumpster to put all the storm debris in.

Materials are in such short supply due to the scale of damage across the region, they’re looking to source in IL & WI. Expect delays in rebuilding #IowaDerecho #iowahurricane

Again, as of now, the residents of Timber Ridge outside Shellsburg, all of Benton Co, and all other affected counties except Linn, cannot get individual assistance from FEMA.

That $ can help w home repairs, rent assistance, relocation, medical bills #IowaDerecho #iowahurricane

As Belle Plaine City Administrator Stephen Beck told me, FEMA individual assistance for rural poor ‘would change their lives’.

Farm damage is incredible, but he says farmers ‘will be taken care of’. But ‘nobody is taking care of rural poor’.

#IowaDerecho #iowahurricane

More from rural Benton County:

Belle Plaine City Administrator Stephen Beck told me he’s beyond frustrated w what he sees as a lack of coordinated disaster response from st & federal govt.

Said they ‘flew over Benton County like it doesn’t exist’.

#IowaDerecho #iowahurricane

Belle Plaine City Administrator Stephen Beck said he’s incredibly worried about mental health, not just in BP, but in the smaller towns around that BP is a hub for.

More than the #IowaDerecho, more than #COVID19, he says the crisis there is mental health.

#iowahurricane

Pastor Kate West of First Congregational United Church of Christ in Belle Plaine was one of the many local volunteers who stepped up after the #IowaDerecho.

She became de facto emergency food aid coordinator, something she said she’d never done before. #IowaHurricane

Not sure why it's not showing up in the alt description of these past Belle Plaine photos, but they're courtesy of Belle Plaine City Administrator Stephen Beck. Thank you!

Pastor Kate West (on the r) ran food kitchen out of the Belle Plaine community ctr, says they fed up to 800 a day.

Residents could also charge phones & medical devices there. Said # of ppl who came to charge oxygen equipment bc nowhere else to go was unconscionable #IowaDerecho

Pastor Kate West on rural poverty and the #IowaDerecho:

“I really feel like we are being told, pull yourself up from the bootstraps.

Well, if you no longer have straps on your boots, how are we supposed to pull them up?

And that’s if you’re lucky enough to have a boot.”

Pastor Kate West says she’s also very concerned about mental health after the #IowaDerecho. Says it’s physically so much harder to access & culturally taboo.

Worried about ppl who seem fine, take care of spouses & kids and then ‘walk out into a field one day and never come back’

I'm listening back to the tape and misremembered something: the stroller in the burn pit is Terry's, not their son Kevin's.

Terry had kept it for 75 years.

Update: last night the announcement came down that @fema has approved individual assistance for 10 additional counties in Iowa, including Benton County.

More on this from me 👇🏻

#IowaDerecho #IowaHurricane #iapolitics

iowapublicradio.org/ipr-news/2020-…

@fema My latest: some of the #derecho stories in rural Iowa are astonishing: a grain bin flying half a mile thru the air, tree limbs the size of person flying 60 ft up.

And the people left behind in the rubble.

Listen here for the fate of one century farm 👇🏻

iowapublicradio.org/ipr-news/2020-…